Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East.(Brief article)(Book review)

Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East

Deborah Amos. Public Affairs, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-58648-649-5

While the U.S. military "surge" began to suppress violence in Iraq in 2007, a surge of another kind with more catastrophic consequences was already in full swing. Millions of Iraqis, mostly Sunnis, fled the country, creating a refugee crisis that has only recently been acknowledged as such by the U.S. government. Veteran reporter Amos traces the exodus and the effects of the shift in power from the formerly Sunni-backed regime of Saddam to the Shiite government erected by the U.S. invasion. She deftly examines the …